Genuine reality

This first full biography of William James in nearly a generation brings us the man alive in all his complexity. Intellectual rebel, romantic pragmatist, aristocratic pluralist, James was both a towering figure of the nineteenth century and a springboard into the twentieth. Constitutionally opposed to the rigidity and stability of the nineteenth century, James guided his generation toward the ambivalence, unpredictability, and indeterminacy of the times that followed.

His explorations of pluralism and pragmatism nurtured ideas that continue to shape our society. Profiting from a rich range of sources, among them 1,500 letters written between James and his wife, Alice, Linda Simon creates an intimate portrait of this multifaceted and contradictory man.